Hungry for Startup Advice? 5 Lessons from Belly’s Funding

Attention would-be super startups: A big deal just went down and, as always, there are lessons to be learned.

Thanks to a $10 million plateful of funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Chicago startup Belly is growling and ready to expand. But to quote Fast Company’s E.B. Boyd, the question on many minds is, “how did a startup, that’s barley a year old, that only has 1,400 customers, and whose founder is a first-timer” land such a deal?

According to Boyd, there are five keys to Belly’s success that other startups would be wise to emulate, including finding a way to tackle a big problem by focusing on just one aspect of a solution. Another key tactic that founder Logan LaHive employed was taking up residence with venture firm Lightbank, which allowed him to “move into their offices and hammer out his idea while sitting mere feet away from” an experienced investor and entrepreneur team. “That helped him move faster,” Boyd writes. “There were various things about getting a startup off the ground that he didn’t have to figure out on his own. He could just ask.”